Thread: intimidation
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Old 04-25-2012, 09:15 AM   #57
genin
Location: southwest
Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 103
United_States
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Re: intimidation

I'm not sure what this qualifies as, but I'll post it here. I was walking to the store this weekend and I came across a teenager up ahead. For some reason the kid started attacking the road signs on the side of this bridge. I couldn't tell if he was doing this for my benefit since he saw me approaching, or if he was going to do it anyway for whatever reason. It came to the point where I was going to have to literally walk right past him while he was doing spin kicks and punches on these signs, very spastically I might add. I'm not sure if he was trying to intimidate me, but it became clear that he wanted to involve me in whatever he was doing. I mean, typically if you were vandalizing public property and a stranger walked up, you'd stop.

In true form, my strategy is not to win a potential conflict, but to circumvent it. So I continued on toward this kid and then at the last moment I veered to the left and past under the bridge, avoiding him altogether. He obviously could tell that this was a deliberate move, and I anticipated that he wouldn't be able to let that go without acknowledging my actions. I kept walking as though I never even factored him in, then I hear "Oh, it's okay, I'm straight bro..." And no sooner did he say that then he moved on about his business down the road. Clearly, he was looking to elicit a reaction from me, and when that was not forthcoming, he had to settle for another attempt to get my attention.

It was one of those weird deals where I couldn't tell if this was just a goofy teenager "look at me" type thing, or if this was some sort of strange aggressive intimidation tactic. Just thought I'd share that experience for what it's worth.
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